My Page: David Nolt

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Hand-picked headlines

The Bozeman City Commission will discuss the nuts and bolts of curbside recycling at 7 p.m. tonight at the Gallatin County Courthouse. Commissioners say they would need around 1,000 customers to make the project viable.

The Gallatin County Commission will hold a hearing on the long-debated jail bond issue on Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the courthouse. Commissioners are discussing a $28.5 million bond to build on the site of the current Law & Justice Center on South 16th Avenue.

The Montana State University Agricultural Marketing Policy Center is launching a program to help inform ag producers on bio-energy crops.

Economists from the Montana State University Extension will offer workshops on livestock production cost control and risk management in Ronan, Browning and Dillon. [more]

Selling the Dream

Yellowstone Club, the controversial pinnacle of luxury vacation home communities located near Big Sky, Montana, is up for sale -- the result of an increasingly bitter divorce between the club's CEO Tim Blixseth and his wife Edra.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports the Blixseths are in negotiations to sell with real-estate and private-equity firm Crossharbor Capital, run by longtime Yellowstone Club member Samuel Byrne. Sources in the WSJ story say initial discussions are valuing the club at somewhere between $400 and $600 million.

As Tim and Edra Blixseth divvy up $2 billion worth of assets including private jets, cars and property (slightly higher stakes than sorting traditional relationship spoils like T-shirts, TVs and albums), the embattled husband eloquently described himself in an email to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle as "the dreamer who was fortunate enough to see his dream come to life, and to also see it continued and fully fulfilled in the original way it was dreamed." [more]

Red Light, Green Light

Avalanche-prone Sylvan Pass, which connects Cody, Wyoming to the interior of Yellowstone National Park, is currently open for oversnow travel. Wait, no, it's closed. Nope, open. Closed. Wait, it's definitely open. For now.

Between December 29, 2007 and New Year's Day, Park Service officials have closed the pass twice due to avalanche conditions. Using howitzers and helicopters for avalanche mitigation, the Park Service reopened the pass on the same days of closures, but the troubled recreation travel corridor continues to claim the time of Park Service staff and precious, limited federal dollars.

"It is a challenging place for us to work," Yellowstone National Park Spokesman Al Nash admits. "It's a challenging job that we've been doing for a long time."

Since 1973, to be precise, and despite a draft Environmental Impact Statement by the Yellowstone National Park Service in 2006 with a preferred alternative of closing the pass in the winter, Park Service employees continue to open the dangerous pass to the tune of roughly $200,000 each winter. [more]

Hand-picked headlines

•Kirk Johnson of the New York Times writes about the future delisting of wolves in the ever-changing Greater Yellowstone Area.

•Also in the New York Times, a story on the sale of nearly $3 billion worth of public lands in Nevada.

•A study by the U.N. World Heritage Committee asserts Yellowstone National Park is still plagued by threats that prompted officials to put the park on the committee's list of international endangered sites in 1995, the Billings Gazette reports.

•Montana State University Billings and the National Center for Appropriate Technology will host a workshop on biodiesel production, the "Oilseeds for Fuel, Feed and the Future Project" on January 9th and 10th in Billings.
[more]

New Years Weekend Roundup

From 1968 to 2008, from Livingston to Big Sky, New Year's Eve weekend is set in southwestern Montana. Thanks to BozemanEvents.Net, you need not go anywhere else to plan your party itinerary.

If you're planning to travel across the New West region, check NewWestEvents.Net for all your eventful needs. [more]

Conservation and Ranching

Sun Ranch owner and Sun Ranch Institute Board Chairman Roger Lang is currently working with the Forest Service and the Trust for Public Land to add about 11,000 acres to an existing 6,800 acres of conservation easements on his Madison Valley property. Lang, a former Silicon Valley CEO, purchased the ranch ten years ago. Using an experimental “Sun Ranch Model,” Lang has strived to balance conservation and ranching on his wildlife-rich property, most famously amidst reintroduced gray wolves.

The publicly funded $4.5 million easement will include 10 three-acre building envelopes in the Papoose Creek area, but it will also erase over 200 platted subdivision lots from previous property owners over vast stretches of the property.

Wild bison advocates are embracing the easement cautiously; initial negotiations include talk of studying genetically pure bison on land within the easement. Bison advocates worry domestic bison would preclude chances for the traditional bison range to again carry wild bison populations, but Lang says the hope is to one day open the property to wild bison should the politically sensitive issue of brucellosis become resolved.

“If and when society says ‘let’s let bison roam again,’ then I want to be in a position to help,” Lang says. “I don’t want this easement to preclude Sun Ranch from participating in those kinds of issues.” [more]

Ameya Preserve: Part V

Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a series about the proposed Ameya Preserve development near Livingston, Montana. (Click here to read Part I, click here to read Part II, click here for Part III, and here for Part IV.

There are many unique aspects to the proposed Ameya Preserve development south of Livingston, but in one key respect the project is almost commonplace in the New West: it's aimed at the ultra-rich, those who can afford to spend many millions of dollars on a second or third or fourth home.

There is a lot of competition in this niche. In Montana alone, there is, famously, the Yellowstone Club, which boasts a private ski resort and what may be the world's most expensive single-family home (and which was, not incidentally, made possible by timber trader Tom Blixseth's shrewd swap to acquire what was once public land). There is neighboring Spanish Peaks, where the price of entry is a bit lower. Just up the road is the new Moonlight Basin ski resort and accompanying real estate development (the owners there recently announced they were seeking partners to speed the build). There is the Rock Creek Cattle Company near Deer Lodge, where the amenities include a working cattle ranch (and whose owner, Fidelity National Financial chairman William Foley, counts Whitefish Mountain Resort and several restaurant chains among his Montana holdings).

There is Saddlehorn, near Bigfork, which is also touting its environmental friendliness. There is the Wilderness Club, near Eureka, the Iron Horse Ranch, outside of Whitefish, and the venerable Stock Farm, the Charles Schwab-driven development in the Bitterroot Valley.

Indeed, the biggest challenge for the Ameya Preserve may have less to do with local opposition and state land politics than with basic business issues. With the real estate market in a slump and so many developments aimed at the same high-end demographic, will Ameya sell? [more]

Ameya Preserve, Part IV

Editor's Note: This is the fourth installment of a series about the proposed Ameya Preserve development near Livingston, Montana. (Click here to read Part I, click here to read Part II, here to read Part III, and here for Part V.

The arguments over wildlife habitat and the sale of state sections to the Ameya Preserve are part and parcel of a more emotional issue: whether the development is in tune with Montana "values."

Despite all their efforts to be sensitive to the community, the developers have committed more than a few faux pas and are paying for it. Following the contentious land sale meeting with the county commissioners, Dokken wrote a lengthy response in which he accused his critics as having “class envy… directed at people who have had more success in life… Perhaps they were smarter. Perhaps they worked harder. Perhaps they were more ambitious. Perhaps they managed their money better,” Dokken wrote.

The remark resulted in nearly two weeks full of incensed letters to the editor in the local daily paper, and though Dokken apologized - saying the remarks were taken out of context and only directed at two critics - his reputation here hasn’t been the same since.

There are also passages in Ameya literature such as “spirited angling for native brown trout” (brown trout are not native to Montana) or providing “access to private heli-skiing in the Absaroka Wilderness Area” (not legal), which seem to reveal a disconnect with the area.

And then there is the issue of public access. Montana has the nation’s strongest law protecting public access to rivers and streams, and while no similar law applies to land, all public lands are open to hiking and – most crucially – hunting. [more]

BozemanEvents.Net Weekend Roundup

A major weather system left western Montana covered in snow. Pick a hill and go get some!

Friday's a great day for sports fans with men's and women's basketball games as well as Icedogs hockey.

Basketball
Men's Bobcats play Great Falls at 7 p.m. and the lady Cats play Gonzaga at 8 p.m. Both games are on the MSU campus.

Hockey
The Bozeman Icedogs take to the ice against the Helena Bighorns, 7:30 p.m. at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds.

Music
Local rockers Sixteenpenny are at the Zebra. Slo Mo Joe and the No Shows are at the Filler. Boot Whiskey is at Highsides in Livingston. [more]

Ameya Preserve, Part III

Editor's Note: This is the third installment of a series about the proposed Ameya Preserve development near Livingston, Montana. (Click here to read Part I, click here to read Part II, here for Part IV and here for Part V.

One of the most critical and controversial issues surrounding the Ameya Preserve is the potential sale of two state sections of land isolated within Ameya property. As in much of the West, a lot of property around Livingston is owned in the checkerboard legacy of the railroad land grants, and there are numerous situations where state or federal land is completely surrounded by private property.

In 2003 the Montana Legislature initiated the Montana Land Banking Program, partly to deal with this sort of issue. The intent of the program, according to the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC), is “for the state to dispose of tracts of land that generally do not have legal access, generate substantially less income for the trust than their relative value or are difficult for the Department to manage, and to purchase replacement property with legal access, potential for increased Trust revenue and consequently is more efficient to manage.” [more]

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